Russian Overtures · Russian National Orchestra · Mikhail Pletnev

×

Russian Overtures · Russian National Orchestra · Mikhail Pletnev

Close

Russian Overtures · Russian National Orchestra · Mikhail Pletnev
APE+CUE 273 MB | MP3 HQ (tracks) 108 MB | EASY CD-DA 12 | Booklet | No Log | 1994

First is worst here. Pletnev sets off as if determined to take the world speed record for the Ruslan Overture; and perhaps he succeeds, but in the process of pressing his violins to the limits of their performance he leaves the engineers struggling to catch scales that could sparkle instead of merely racing. Naturally this commits him to a second subject that is tense rather than impassioned (it comes from Ruslan's Act 2 aria on the deserted battlefield). Matters improve. The Prince Igor Overture is warmly played, and there is an exuberance only slightly forced in Shostakovich's Festive Overture. Perhaps, as David Brown suggests in his notes, the festivity came as a direct response to the death of Stalin in the previous year, and once Shostakovich had purged experience in the Tenth Symphony (with its 'Stalin' scherzo and triumphant survival of Shostakovich's own theme). Certainly it is one of the least ironic, openly exuberant pieces which Shostakovich ever wrote, and it is played with brisk cheerfulness here.

Colas Breugnon sounds, surprisingly, a little slack after this. Pletnev is at his most successful with the more reflective introduction to Semyan Kotko, and with the beautiful evocation of dawn over the Moscow River that opens Khovanshchina. Tchaikovsky's almost unknown early overture is a curiosity. It is not hard to observe some of the features that were to distinguish Tchaikovsky's style, with hindsight, but who could have had the foresight to see the genius that would charge them? The overture is eloquently played by a conductor and orchestra with much potential. ' Reviewed: Gramophone 12/1994, John Warrack